xplorer2 crashes with pdf preview: solutions?

[sulwyn]

I mostly love xplorer2, but the one big problem I've had with it is its  apparent inability to natively preview or search pdfs.  I've read about this issue extensively on the forum & the blog, and tried many variations of Foxit's ifilter, older versions of Adobe Reader, and PDF Xchange.  Nothing works without crashing the application.

Foxit's ifilter shows an initial native preview of a pdf, but when I try to switch to another pdf, x2 crashes.  I uninstalled this and installed PDF X-change, which acts like it has a native preview function, but just shows blank pages.  Neither of them allow me to do a pdf text search.

I've had this problem on various systems, both XP & W7 (x32/x64), but right now I'm working on a W7 machine (x32) with x2 Pro v2.1.0.1.

I'm at a loss here.  I really like x2 otherwise & I don't want to have to find a new program for previewing/searching pdfs.  Any ideas?

[gufus]

I use Adobe Reader v9.5.1 with x2 v2.1.0.2 ULT

With /no/ problems, XP Pro SP3 32bit

[bq3419]

Adobe Reader X 10.1.3 works for me with xplorer2 2.1.0.2 Pro x64 on Windows 7 x64 SP1. It doesn't offer a text search in xplorer2's native preview tab, however.

[gufus]

It doesn't offer a text search in xplorer2's native preview tab, however.

It does with Adobe reader v9.5.1

[bq3419]

It doesn't offer a text search in xplorer2's native preview tab, however.

It does with Adobe reader v9.5.1

Always a pity to see features go missing: I've rechecked the context menu and some obvious keyboard shortcuts (Ctrl+F, F3) while the native preview tab is active, but no dice.

[gufus]

It doesn't offer a text search in xplorer2's native preview tab, however.

It does with Adobe reader v9.5.1

Always a pity to see features go missing: I've rechecked the context menu and some obvious keyboard shortcuts (Ctrl+F, F3) while the native preview tab is active, but no dice.

Drop back to v9

See...
http://www.gypsy-designs.com/1.jpg

[bq3419]

It does with Adobe reader v9.5.1

Always a pity to see features go missing: I've rechecked the context menu and some obvious keyboard shortcuts (Ctrl+F, F3) while the native preview tab is active, but no dice.

Drop back to v9

See...
http://www.gypsy-designs.com/1.jpg

Thank you for the screenshot; unfortunately, I can't find anything like that in 10.x's native preview tab.

[nikos]

like many others said here, if foxit doesn't work for you then your only bet for text searches is the old adobe reader 9.x. You will find download links for it here: www.zabkat.com/x2plugins.htm

[RightPaddock]

PDF Exchange viewer (v6.5 build 201) search works fine for me in X2 Preview - note I'm on X2 v1.8.

[sulwyn]

I've tried the older versions of Acrobat Reader.  They allow text search, but not a full pdf preview in the preview pane (by which I mean, allowing you to scroll down the document, not just show the first page).  I need both the preview pane and pdf text search to work.  I'm not trying to search for text IN the preview pane.  I've tried pretty much every iteration of Acrobat Reader v9 and Foxit's ifilter, and nothing is working.  Is there some registry tweak I can do to make this work?  I really don't want to ditch xplorer2 but if I can't get this pdf thing working I'm going to have to.

[fgagnon]

FWIW, on my XP system,  PDFs are fully viewable (scroll thru all pages) in the QV pane on the "native" tab.  [x2 ULT v2.1.0.1]
I've been using the Foxit ifilter for text search for years and now also have the Foxit PhantomPDF v5.0.3 (Business Edition, paid license) for viewing/editing/creating PDF's.
(I do not have any Adobe PDF software on the machine.)

[sulwyn]

I tested this extensively again on my Win 7 32x machine.  I removed every pdf reader & ifilter I could find from my machine, and separately tested Acrobat Reader 9.5, PDF-XChange 2.5.201, and Foxit ifilter (latest version).  Here were the results:

Acrobat Reader 9.5: I get a static image of the first page of the pdf in the Native QV pane.  No scrolling, text zooming, etc.

Both PDF-XChange & Foxit ifilter:  When I click on a first pdf to view it in the Native QV pane, it looks like the preview is working correctly--all the pages of the first pdf can be scrolled & zoomed in the preview pane.  However, as soon as I click on a second pdf, I get a "preview" of blank pages.  I tried refreshing the view, clicking onto a non-pdf file & back onto another pdf, and the preview still remains blank.  It looks like it's reading the file to some extent, because the correct number of pages for the pdf show up in the preview pane, but the actual images of the pages don't show.

At the same time, if I use the regular Windows Explorer preview function, it views all pdfs just fine with zoom, scroll, etc.

So--it looks like xplorer2 is halfway recognizing the file.  It will recognize the first pdf clicked, but won't show any pdf clicked after that.  It seems like there must be some kind of tweak or fix that could rectify this!  For now I guess I'll use regular Windows Explorer for my pdf needs and xplorer2 for everything else.  But x2 is an awesome program and it's frustrating that I can't get it to work for the pdf viewing as well!

FWIW, I'm using an HP Mini Win 7 (Starter Version) x32 machine & x2 Pro 2.1.0.1.  I *did* finally get Foxit's ifilter to work correctly on my Win 7 x64 system, after uninstalling all Adobe Reader products and just using Foxit's reader/ifilter only.  It just seems to be screwy on the x32 machine now.  And yes, I made sure I installed the correct version of the ifilter.

Any ideas?  Anyone?  If not, I guess I'll make my peace with this and hope a future upgrade of x2 or ifilters will solve the problem.

Thanks to everyone who posted suggestions.

[nikos]

I heard about these blank pages problem with the PDF X-change viewer but the developers apparently have fixed the problem. Do you have the latest viewer installed? You can check their forum

[fgagnon]

very curious ---
I don't generally use the 'native' QV pane, and only checked one PDF for full scrolling.  But when I try a second PDF while QV native pane is open, I get this error message:

Foxit PDF Preview Handler Host has encountered a problem and needs to close.  We are sorry for the inconvenience.

Yet if I put QV on 'Draft' pane while browsing PDFs, there's no error, and I can toggle to 'native' pane for full viewing those that I want to further inspect with no issue;  but browsing 2 PDFs consecutively with 'native' QV tab open throws the error.  Doing anything in between yields no error. (browse to a non-PDF,  or return QV to 'Draft' pane, or turn QV off & back on after selecting a different PDF).

[sulwyn]

Yes, I'm sure I have tried the latest 32-bit versions of both PDF-Xchange & Foxit.  I get the same problem with both--the native pdf previewer works fine on the first pdf I click on, and then when I click on a second pdf, I get a blank series of pages.  Again--each time I click on a 2nd, 3rd, etc pdf, the preview pane updates to show the correct number of pages for each new pdf I'm clicking.  So obviously it's reading *something* from the pdf.  But the actual image doesn't show up.  I've tried toggling back & forth between native & draft preview, jumping from a non-pdf to a pdf file, etc, and nothing seems to work.  It's the same problem with Foxit & PDF-XChange, and with both, the preview works just fine in regular Windows Explorer.